PaCkMaN's Corner

by

I was impressed by the message of our club
president, Earl Jones, on the cover of this
newsletter. I ask that you open the tabs and read
that first.

It is true that cyclists provide a steady stream of
victims to our automobile culture. Although
most drivers experience a nervous tightening in
the presence of cyclists and exercise the special
care that their weight, bulk and speed advantages
require, many improperly regard us as
interlopers and exhibit a dangerous tendency to
flout that advantage and buzz or attempt to
intimidate us. Worse, we sometime don't even
register on some drivers' minds until it is too late.
Earl is right that riding in groups, even just pairs,
increases our visibility to this last group,
reducing the chance of inadvertent encounters.

It should also be noted that the same thing
happens in our town almost every day to
motorcyclists. PSAs have been regularly run on
radio and TV warning drivers to be careful
around motorcyclists. And recently, PSAs have
begun airing about the need and requirement for
caution around cyclists.

I suggest that it would not be a mixed message
and would leverage ad time to include both kinds
of two-wheelers in the same ads because both
face the same hazards of being smaller vehicles,
not as visible to many drivers and suffering
serious accidents under similar circumstances,
such as left turning cars, cars stopping too fast
and cars squeezing the lane.

But obviously it is not only we on two wheels
who are at risk from automobiles. Carelessness,
road rage and the unavoidable claim the lives of
drivers themselves every day, over 40,000
Americans and 1 1/4 million worldwide (2002
World Health Organization report) every year.
Clearly we and our presence on the road are not
the problem.

I believe that more than exhortations are required
to do more than reduce the carnage slightly at the
margin. Yes, tougher enforcement before and
after incidents as called for by our president
would also be helpful. But drivers need to be
called more to account for their true human
costs. I propose several measures which I believe
would have a dramatic impact: 1) Take care of
the seriously injured by increasing insurance
minimums, often only $25,000, to $2 million
with full prepaid annual premiums and serious
measures to remove the uninsured from the road;
2) Presumption of right-of-way by smaller
vehicles, as is the case on water; 3) Serious
criminal penalties in wrongful deaths; 4) Juries
of our peers, including cyclists; 5) Reduced
speed limits on roads without shoulders and
traffic lights timed to 20 mph, which is what city
traffic actually averages anyway.

Belied by the annual autumn falloff in gas prices,
it was just reported that world oil production is
now in 9% annual decline and our automobile
society is headed for a wall in the next few years.
It would soften the impact on everyone to begin
reducing driving now and move to alternatives
such as cycling whenever possible, which would
increase our visibility and group formations.
That more than anything will make the roads
safer eventually.